Suha Taji-Farouki

In recent decades, new voices have appeared on the contemporary Islamic intellectual map, vying for a place with the now hugely influential Salafi approach to Islam, generally characteristic of Islamism, and that of its traditionalist opponents. These are the voices of new Muslim intellectuals which, taken together, capture an emerging trend in Muslim interpretation.

While modern changes were intrinsic to Western historical development, they were largely seen by Muslims as alien and enforced.

But the most vocal and articulate on anti-democracy views among these groups is Hizb al-Tahrir, founded in Palestine in the 1950s but currently active internationally, in particular in Britain, Pakistan and some Arab countries...Hizb al-Tahrir calls for a campaign of education and intellectual debate which would lead to the re-establishment of the khilafa. While employing the concept of the 'Islamic State', Hizb al-Tahrir espouses the traditional belief that the restoration of the khilafa is both necessary and sufficient to resolve the problem of governance. Even Hizb al-Tahrir, however, could not resist the seduction of democratic procedures. The khalifa has to be elected, and consultative councils form part of the structure of power.

In its distinctive strategy and internal dynamics and its rich intellectual tradition, Hizb al-Tahrir points up the heterogeneity of twentieth-century Islamist protest movements in the Middle East.

Any discussion of Muslim intellectual life in the twentieth century must take into account the defining context of modernisation, with its dislocating effects on structural, economic, societal, political and cultural realities in Muslim countries.